Over the years, a number of different types of fertilizer compositions have been developed and employed in agriculture. In the recent past, synthetic chemical fertilizer compositions dominated the fertilizer marketplace. More recently, however, the public has become increasingly aware and concerned about the links between synthetic chemical fertilizer use, environmental degradation, and human illness. For instance, the public has recently become more aware that synthetic chemical fertilizers contain poisons, pollute water, destroy microbes in the soil, lose half their value due to runoff, burn roots, require significant amounts of water, contain less micro-nutrition, and are heavily laden with salt.
Consequently, there has been a significant movement toward fertilizer compositions that are suitable for use in United States Department of Agriculture certified organic crop production. These fertilizer compositions are typically derived from natural sources and do not rely on synthetic chemicals. Unlike synthetic products, organic fertilizers encourage the growth of micro-organisms, which break down old plant material and convert nutrients into food. Consequently, over time, the use of organic fertilizers results in healthier and more fertile soil, which leads to hardier and more robust plants.
Furthermore, consumers are more concerned about health and the environment than ever before and are making purchasing decisions based upon those concerns. As a result, more and more consumers are purchasing organic foods. Studies show that many consumers who purchase organic foods do so because they wish to avoid toxic and persistent pesticides and fertilizers.
As a result of the increased demand for organic fertilizer compositions, there is significant interest in developing better organic fertilizer compositions that provide nutrients and reduce the risk of introducing pathogens into the food supply.
Desirable nutrients include, but are not limited to, bioavailable phosphorous, potassium, and nitrogen. These nutrients must not only be present in the fertilizer, but also must be present in sufficient concentrations to benefit agricultural vegetation. In addition, the organic fertilizer compositions must be in a form that is readily applied to the agricultural vegetation and/or has minimum impact on the surrounding community. To this end, the desirable characteristics of organic fertilizer compositions include, but are not limited to, the following: the ability to directly apply the organic fertilizer compositions in a low viscosity liquid form; the ability to inject and/or add the organic fertilizer compositions into irrigation streams; time-released nitrogen components, which become bioavailable to agricultural vegetation by beneficial microbial digestion in soil; minimized chemical crop burning; minimal odor associated with the organic fertilizer composition during and/or after application; and minimized undesirable runoff.
In an effort to find a cost-efficient organic fertilizer composition, numerous attempts have been made to utilize waste products generated by fermentation and/or refined sugar processing as an organic fertilizer composition. These attempts have included deriving organic fertilizer compositions from malt extracts and/or spent grain liquor; treating molasses to recover potassium and nitrogen in solid form for use as an organic fertilizer composition; deriving organic fertilizer compositions from commercially available molasses; deriving thixotrophic fertilizer compositions from organic materials including molasses; and deriving organic fertilizer compositions from yeast/black strap molasses. However, these organic fertilizer compositions typically lack the requisite concentrations of nutrients to be beneficial to agricultural vegetation.
Some efforts to “boost” the concentrations of nutrients in these waste by-product based organic fertilizer compositions require significant chemical processing and/or the addition of synthetically derived chemicals. However, this approach often defeated the original goal of developing an “organic” fertilizer composition, and in many cases proved too costly to be economically feasible. In other cases, it was believed that certain by-products were not capable of satisfying the requirements of federal rules regulating organic fertilizers. Thus, some sources of fertilizer nutrients were dismissed as too expensive and/or as non-organic.
Betaine is an N-trimethylated amino acid historically used as a feed additive for many animal species. As a source of fertilizer nutrients, it is traditionally taught that betaine cannot satisfy the requirements necessary for use in USDA certified organic crop production and is also too expensive for conventional fertilizer use. In addition, betaine was historically thought to have too high a pH to be effectively and universally used as a fertilizer.
Given the cost of betaine and that betaine was not considered suitable for use in USDA certified organic crop production, traditional teaching was that it was more cost effective for a user seeking fertilizer to purchase urea, which is less expense and contains a higher percentage of nitrogen than betaine. Thus, traditional agriculture largely ignored betaine as a viable fertilizer.
There is a current need for an environmentally benign fertilizer derived from a natural organic source that provides sufficient levels of usable nutrients but does not require significant processing, does not raise environmental concerns, and does not adversely affect the pH of the soil.